Ottawa Senators: Making Sense of Awful Trade Proposals

The trade: Ottawa acquires Denis Malgin from Toronto for a 2020 1st (OTT)

This is a perfect example of the amount of dissonance between the proposals and reality. At 23-years old, Malgin has proven to be a dependable bottom six options. Scoring a career high 11 goals with Florida in 2017-18 and settling in as part of Toronto’s rotating cast of fourth liners after being acquired by the Leafs this February. Apparently, that makes him worthy of a third overall pick in a draft oozing with future top-end talent.

But while the trade is laughably one-sided, the idea makes sense. The Leafs have lots of young forwards and Ottawa has lots of high draft picks. If Toronto was looking to unload some of them due to the impending flat cap and wanted to still get something close to market value, Ottawa would be a team that might be willing to part with a valuable pick due to their current excess.

While Malgin is a pending RFA and would likely get a small raise, his current $750K cap hit isn’t enough to cause the Leafs to panic, but at $3.2 million, forward Kasperi Kapanen might be. Of course, even when making the clear upgrade from Malgin to Kapanen, the 3rd overall pick in this year’s draft is still way too much, as is the 5th pick. But what about Ottawa’s third 1st rounder from the Islanders?

The Islanders pick could land anywhere from 13th to 31st (or 1st but in that case New York would almost certainly elect to keep the pick and hand Ottawa their 2021 1st rounder). If the Islanders fail to win their qualifying round or bow out of the playoffs early and the pick winds up in the top-20, that may still be too much. If the Islanders go on an extended run, however, and the pick falls to the mid twenties, Ottawa could be wise to flip it to their provincial rivals in exchange for a young top-six forward.

If Ottawa intends to hold onto the Islanders pick, they still have four second rounders and six picks in the last five rounds to work with, so some combination of those could entice the Leafs to make Kapanen a cap casualty.

The Trade: Ottawa acquires Cody Ceci (TOR) and Frederic Allard (NSH), Nashville acquires Martin Marincin (TOR), Toronto acquires Rocco Grimaldi (NSH) and a 2020 1st (NSH)

We’re picking on the Leafs again, and in fact the same user, because apparently they’re convinced that bad players are worth first rounders. This trade was designed to clear cap space as well as space for Toronto’s defence prospects in the way of Cody Ceci and Martin Marincin. Much like the Malgin trade, it severely overvalues the Toronto players.

Ottawa Senators

Ceci and Marincin are both borderline NHL defencemen yet somehow would fetch a first rounder as well as a quality forward in Rocco Grimaldi. That isn’t the only issue with this, as the Sens made it clear last offseason that they were intent on moving on from Cody Ceci and many fans would likely be horrified to see him return.

Fortunately, that won’t be the case as this trade has a third problem in that Cody Ceci is a pending UFA. This means the Leafs wouldn’t need to trade him to free up cap space and even if the Sens wanted him back there’d really be no reason to trade for his rights, given that he’s already familiar with Ottawa and likely wouldn’t be persuaded in either direction by a pitch from the franchise.

With that in mind, let’s eliminate Cody Ceci from the equation, and since we’re down a player we’ll knock Nashville out too and deal directly with the Leafs yet again. Marincin still makes sense in this scenario as he still has one year at $700K on his contract, meaning that while the minuscule salary likely wouldn’t provide much cap relief for the Leafs, it would clear up some blueline space for a young player, as this proposal suggests they would like to do.

While it wouldn’t be a cap dump because of the low salary, Toronto wouldn’t likely be interested in increasing their cap hit either, so it would likely have to be a draft pick or a prospect going the other way. Marincin could provide Ottawa with some help on the back-end but he’s not the type of player the team would likely want to give up a lot to acquire, so perhaps a fringe prospect such as JC Beaudin, Jakov Novak, or Viktor Lodin would do. If that’s not enough for the Leafs I would be more inclined to suggest giving up a 4th or 5th round pick instead of reaching higher up the prospect ranks.

The trade: Ottawa acquires Kris Russell, James Neal, Jesse Puljujarvi, and a 2020 3rd (EDM) from Edmonton for Connor Brown, Christian Jaros, a 2020 1st (OTT), a 2020 2nd (NYI), and a 2020 2nd (OTT)

We’ll head over to the NHL’s other hub city for our third and final trade. I believe the intention here is a cap dump, given that the trade is titled “CAP DUMP”. That said, this goes far beyond a typical cap dump as there are multiple impact pieces going both ways.

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It should also go without saying that this would be a terrible trade for Ottawa. One could even make the argument that the deal’s four best pieces are all going to Edmonton, as Ottawa loses the three best picks and possibly the best player in Brown. Edmonton, on the other hand, trades two big deals for players on the wrong side of 30, a measly (when compared to the other three picks) third, and a player who a) has no intention to play for the Oilers, b) has unclear intentions of ever playing in the NHL, and c) has yet to prove himself in the NHL.

We’ll need to clear a lot of the non-cap dump pieces out of the way to really get started on this, so that leaves us with just Russell and Neal coming to Ottawa and no one going the other way. In fact, I’ll even take this a step further and limit it to just Russell as Neal is still providing decent value for Edmonton while also having more term left on his deal, making him a player that neither party would likely have interest in including in this deal.

That leaves us with the question of what to send the other way as well as the sweetener for taking on Russell’s deal. For the latter question, I’ll actually bring Puljujarvi back into the deal. While he’s not the most attractive trade chip, he’s the kind of high-reward player the Sens should be after if the risk is low enough.

To find the player going to Edmonton, he need to find a player who’s less valuable than Puljujarvi as Ottawa acquiring Kris Russell is more of an asset for Edmonton than Ottawa. While the decision may be unpopular due to his play last season, I’ve decided that Mike Reilly will be heading over to Edmonton in the trade. Reilly was possibly the team’s second best defenceman last season, but at 27 he’s unlikely to emerge as anything beyond a low-end NHLer. He’s a UFA after next season so he probably isn’t in the longterm plans, and with Artem Zub, Erik Brannstrom, Max Lajoie, and others on the verge of making the team, adding a Kris Russell would only really make sense if there was a spot on the blueline being cleared up.

Conclusion

That concludes what could safely be called the least-sexy trade proposals piece of all time as with the exception of Kapanen and possibly Puljujarvi, there were no impact players involved. That may be okay for a team like Ottawa though, who have one of the league’s top prospect systems and should now be looking to supplement the emerging young core instead of swinging for the fences, at least for the time being.

Not all of the trades seem like big wins, or even wins at all for the team, but by grounding ourselves in the fantasies of fans of other teams, the trades can seem a whole lot more reasonable.